amiga-news.de - Archive

Archive 01/2023

`04.Jan.2023` Alfred Faust (ANF)	MorphOS: BarsnPipes 1.2 Alfred Faust wrote: "After several weeks of intensive programming, a new version of BarsnPipes for MorphOS 3.17 has been completed and is available for download at the title link. Import and export of MIDI files (*.mid) has been integrated into the main programme. The 10 different mouse pointers in the editor have been firmly integrated into the main programme as new 32bit png images. These are now pointers of the same type as the system pointer, ... and much more ... All available tools (102) and accessories (6) (the plugins of BarsnPipes) for which the source code has been released and whose use with the new version of the main programme makes sense have been integrated. Included in the archive, all available documentation and instructions. For developers, the "New Rules for Tools" (instructions and all material for programming tools and accessories) have been adapted for MOS 3.17 (and higher). Also an SDK for tools and accessories by Michael Rees, which extends the "New Rules for Tools" and makes them more comfortable. The "Rules for Skins" (instructions for designing your own surfaces for BarsnPipes), as well as the material for your own translations of the Locale catalogue files are also available for download. BarsnPipes has thus reached a stage of development that essentially marks an end point. Every possible extension or improvement can be made using the tools or accessories." (dr) [News message: 04. Jan. 2023, 18:32] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`04.Jan.2023` Twitter	CDXL video player: AGABlaster 0.9.91 AGABlaster plays Commodore's CDXL video format. According to the author, it uses a customized version of the CDXL format supporting the AGA chipset with 24 bit colors and variable length frames. Customized CDXL files can be generated with AGAConv. AGABlaster is written in 68K Assembly and runs on native Amiga hardware (no gfx card or sound card required). In version 0.9.91 support for PAUSE on startup was added which allows to wait for modern monitors to synchronize at first frame. (dr) [News message: 04. Jan. 2023, 11:07] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`04.Jan.2023`	Floppy disk images on PC and Mac: Greaseweazle Tools 1.5 Keir Fraser's "Greaseweazle" does - similar to Kryoflux - read the magnetic information on a floppy disk independently from the format used and saves as much information as possible to generate a so-called "Flux Level Image" in Supercard format (SCP), which enables reading and back-writing of copy-protected disks (amiga-news.de reported) The adapter gets connected between a floppy disk drive - e.g. a standard 3.5" PC one - and a USB port of the PC or Mac. A few moments ago version 1.5 of the Greaseweazle Tools was released providing the following changes: User-configurable disk formats: New option --diskdefs New disk formats: ensoniq.mirage and sci.prophet Fill missing/bad sectors with -=[BAD SECTOR]=- pattern (dr) [News message: 04. Jan. 2023, 10:53] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`04.Jan.2023`	Video: Amiga 500 with serial number 190 In his latest video, Jan Beta takes a look at what he believes to be one of the first Amiga 500s, as it bears the serial number 190. (dr) [News message: 04. Jan. 2023, 07:00] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`04.Jan.2023` amigaworld.net (ANF)	AmigaOS 4: Payback ported After a long development period - announced in V - Apex Designs released their Grand Theft Auto clone Payback in February 2001, including a demo version for 68k and PPC processors (WarpUP). In this, the player slips into the role of a young getaway driver while trying to become a big gangster boss. Seven updates and several new and updated maps were released afterwards. Roman 'kas1e' Kargin had received permission from Apex Designs to port the game to AmigaOS 4, which is now available at OS4Depot under the title link. The original game and the last update are also required. The procedure for installing the update is available in detail in the description. Kargin writes about the content of the update: "The original Payback was written in C and built via StormC (meaning GCC 2.95), and a large part of the code was Assembler-based: the 68K version used the 68K assembler, whereas the PPC/WarpOS version used H&P's Power ASM assembler (this one is with Motorola syntax, so it's PPC assembler with Phxass kind syntax and is incompatible with GCC's "as"). So I was in needs to port all the C code from old GCC to newer GCC, and then take the Power ASM assembler code used for the WarpOS version and adapt it, so it can be compiled with self build VASMMOT_PPC (which means VASM with Motorola syntax). Then I used GCC to combine everything into a single OS4 binary. The assembler code adaptation was minor, but I had to implement a few functions that were not available in VASM's assembler (prolog/epilog, pushgprs/popgprs, etc). The next major issue was Payback's Warp3D rendering. The codes were once again "old GFX card" based and contained some bugs, so some rewriting and fixing was required. Yeah, it is not uncommon for game developers from the past to assume that only old kinds of graphics cards will be used (as it was in Exodus: The Last War, for example). Now, you can use hardware rendering on your RadeonHD or RadeonRX cards with no problems, be it NovaBridge or Warp3D_SI. Thanks to Hans for his help in terms of Warp3D code! Migration from GCC 2.95 to GCC 11.3 also takes some time because of plenty of deprecated code, old-fashioned use of DOS's anchors, message ports, memory allocations, the way of calling assembler functions, non-static structs, etc. And, as we were told, the things that were forgiven in GCC 2.95 are no longer applicable in today's GCC, so changes must be made. On top of that, instead of newlib, I do use Afxgroup's improved CLIB2 fork (more specifically, CLIB2_beta07). Once things start working, new video modes are added (so you can play HD modes like 1920x1080 too). At the same time, Javier starts writing a new "preference" program that is now Reaction-based, logical, and visually appealing. Now you can control everything from the PaybackSetupOS4 binary right from the start, as well as later in the game as before, of course. Also, Javier does help with some bits all over the place as always, so hats off for that! The following changes are not included in this update, but are planned for future ones: Support for window mode. Finalizing of the FLC video player with auto-scaling. We do have a working version, but it's not good enough, so we postponed it to a later update. Complete the migration from audio.device to the ahi.device. Also, it kind of works already, but not well enough. Fixing hardware rendering to works on the older Warp3D classic drivers again (migration to the newer GCC required extensive rewriting, resulting in clumsy hardware mode on real Warp3D). to fix bugs that will be found in this update." (dr) [News message: 04. Jan. 2023, 06:43] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`03.Jan.2023` MorphZone	MorphOS: ENCORE updated several demos At the end of October, the demo and game developers Encore (among other 2D shooter Fortis) released its new demo "Morphever", a few days ago the demo "KHESHKHASH" has been updated. Now the developers have updated Morphever, as well as the three other older demos Morphobia, Morphilia and Morphoza to version 1.2.0, which mainly fixes bugs, and features the latest engine and some minor improvements. (dr) [News message: 03. Jan. 2023, 20:57] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`03.Jan.2023` Amigans-Forum	AmigaOS 4: Accessing the ARexx ports of applications on remote PCs In a recent blog entry, Andy Broad (among other things, graphics programme SketchBlock) reports on his current project, currently still called "NetRexx", with which one can write Arexx scripts to control applications on remote computers (YouTube video). (dr) [News message: 03. Jan. 2023, 16:36] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`03.Jan.2023`	Amiga emulator: Amiberry 5.5.1 Amiberry is an Amiga emulator for ARM-based single-chip systems like the Raspberry Pi, the Odroid XU4 or the Tinkerboard from ASUS, which brings some newly developed features like a "WHDLoad-Booter" or support for controller configuration using RetroArch. For example it is used in the Workbench distribution AmiKit for the Raspberry Pi 4/400. Three days ago, the developer had released version 5.5 (amiga-news.de reported) and now provides an update for that. Changes: Bugfixes Retropie's SDL2 version doesn't have SDL_isupper Improvements added more logging during controller detection implemented checking for filenames without charset conversion skip files starting with a dot when reading a directory Build System detect revisions in the detected tags (dr) [News message: 03. Jan. 2023, 05:47] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`03.Jan.2023` Twitter	Blog: Displaying 24-bit images optimally in HAM mode For more than 25 years, Arnaud Carré has been programming and as a member of the demo group Oxygene also demos. In his newly established blog, he deals with the problem of displaying 24-bit images correctly and as best as possible on current PC hardware in the Amiga's HAM mode in order to use them in demos, for example. For this, he gives code examples and insights into his converter, which he will publish soon. (dr) [News message: 03. Jan. 2023, 05:41] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`02.Jan.2023`	RTG Solitaire: "Solitare match" V0.89 At the beginning of December, Sami Vehmaa had published a demo version of his graphics card Solitaire conversion "Solitare match" (YouTube video), which is primarily intended for Amiga emulators or Apollo cards due to the high CPU requirements. The demo version contains five levels. With this update, the paid version now has 75 levels. Besides, the game engine was improved. (dr) [News message: 02. Jan. 2023, 14:09] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`02.Jan.2023`	Dock: QDock V1.49 At the end of October, Sami Vehmaa published the first version of his start bar "QDock" (amiga-news.de reported), which he continues to develop (YouTube video). This update fixes several minor bugs. The tool is currently available for 1 Euro or more. The originally high CPU requirements have been lowered so that the dock can also be used with a 68030 processor when the reflections are deactivated or with a 68060 when activated. In addition, AmigaOS 3.2 (the author could not test under AmigaOS 3.1), graphics card and 22 MB RAM are required. (dr) [News message: 02. Jan. 2023, 14:04] [Comments: 1 - 02. Jan. 2023, 19:38] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`02.Jan.2023` GitHub	Porting Amiga applications to Linux: AxRuntime 41.5 Krzysztof 'deadwood' Śmiechowicz' "AxRuntime" is a runtime environment for Linux which emulates the AmigaOS-API and therefore enables porting Amiga applications on Linux and developing applications which can be compiled for AmigaOS/MorphOS/AROS as well as Linux (amiga-news.de reported). Under Windows it is possible to use it by the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which has been generally available for Windows 10 and 11 in the Microsoft Store since the end of November (amiga-news.de reported). The new version is based on the recently released version 20221221-1 of the ABI v11 developer branch and provides minor bug fixes and changes (latest YouTube video). (dr) [News message: 02. Jan. 2023, 13:53] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`02.Jan.2023`	Aracade-Spiel: "Green Beret" update Green Beret is a conversion of Konami's arcade classic of the same name to the Amiga, written using the Scorpion Engine and won third place at AmiGameJam (amiga-news.de reported). With this update, the developer wishes all a happy new year. Changes: added 2 selectable difficulty levels (Normal and Arcade), because people asked for a less brutal experience. "Normal" has a lifebar (which is not a "heresy", since the Japanese version of Contra Hard Corps (Mega Drive) does that too). "Arcade" is the same difficulty as previous versions (no lifebar, 1 hit = dead). some minor improvements here and there, such as a little flag marking a "save point/spawn point" reached. (dr) [News message: 02. Jan. 2023, 13:47] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`02.Jan.2023`	Linux: Browser Artic Fox V40.1 Christian 'xeno74' Zigotzky has compiled version 40.1 of the web browser Artic Fox (screenshot) for Linux PowerPC (32 Bit). Basically it runs under the Linux PowerPC distributions Void PPC, MintPPC, Fienix and Ubuntu 10.04 (which are also available for AmigaOne X1000 and 5000. Mainly, the browser is meant for older resp. slow systems (e.g. G3 with Ubuntu 10.04) because it is using an older version of the Goanna engine which has a good performance on slower systems. As a result, certain pages like GitHub cannot be fully displayed. Download: arcticfox-40.1.linux-powerpc.tar.bz2 (37 MB) (dr) [News message: 02. Jan. 2023, 07:45] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`02.Jan.2023`	Action game: Elf Spirit Hunters released For the TOY BOX JAM 4, the developer Erik 'earok' Hogan has written the action game "Elf Spirit Hunters" using his Scorpion Engine and released it today. It is inspired by David Crane's Ghostbusters game. The player's task is to rid the world of the last remaining Halloween ghosts shortly before Christmas. To do this, you have to buy elves as helpers in the shop as well as chests in which the ghosts are trapped. An Amiga 500 with 1MB RAM is required. (dr) [News message: 02. Jan. 2023, 07:25] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

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